Fostering a Culture of Academic-Industry Collaboration and Industrial Cluster Management in Saudi Arabia’s Industry: A Saudi-German Initiative

Industrial clusters, industrial collaboration, and technology transfer are key components to a competitive and innovative economy. Any sort of collaboration between industries or between academia and industry is not only crucial to the industry but also to the country’s development and competitiveness (Porter 2008). One of the goals of Saudi Vision 2030 (KSA 2016), a strategic plan for the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA), is for the country to have a diverse and a prosperous economy. Information sharing and applied R&D are necessities to guarantee the Kingdom progresses from its traditional resource-based economy toward a more expansive innovative knowledge-based society and economy. The first goal of this paper is to shed light on a newly erected comprehensive research center named Jubail Research & Innovation ClusterHUB (J-RICH) and located in Jubail Industrial City, KSA, which is the biggest industrial city in the Middle East and North Africa region and the largest petrochemical cluster on earth. The second goal is to highlight the novelty of this center. It is the first of its kind in KSA to offer comprehensive services that promote industry-industry and industry-academic collaboration as well as cluster management. The uniqueness of J-RICH’s mission becomes obvious when described within the broader context of Saudi academic-industry collaboration. Keywords: National Research Centers, Academia-Industry Collaboration, Industrial Clusters, Technology Transfer, Technology Commercialization, Applied-Research